Ireland has now become the largest butter exporter in the EU having overtaken France last year. For 2019, Ireland shipped more than 50,000t of butter to international export markets outside of Europe – a massive increase on the 31,000t of butter exported to international markets in 2018.

The vast majority of this butter was shipped to the US market, where Kerrygold is now the second largest butter brand. In total, almost 28,000t of Irish butter was shipped to the US in 2019 – a sharp increase on the 23,000t exported the previous year.

However, this growth in exports to the US market comes with a health warning. Last year, US President Donald Trump slapped a 25% import tariff on Irish butter, which came into effect in November.

As a result of this, US dairy importers began stockpiling large volumes of Irish butter ahead of the November deadline for the introduction of such a hefty tariff, which artificially inflated exports last year.

Irish dairy co-ops produced more than 250,000t of butter last year, according to the CSO. This is a record level of butter production and reflects the record level of milk produced by Irish farmers last year, which rose 5% year on year to an all-time high of nearly 8bn litres.

Cheese

Irish cheese exports to international markets also enjoyed very strong growth last year. For 2019, Ireland exported just under 70,000t of cheese to international export markets outside of Europe. This makes Ireland the sixth largest cheese exporter in Europe. However, we remain well behind the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy which each export between 100,000t and 150,000t of cheese every year to markets outside the EU.

By far the largest export destination for Irish cheese was Japan, with close to 20,000t of cheddar shipped to the Asian nation in 2019. This is up from the near 12,000t in 2018.

Japan is a large consumer of cheddar cheese and will prove a very important export market in the years ahead as the Irish dairy industry looks to diversify away from its exposure to the UK cheddar market.

Aside from Japan, Irish dairy companies shipped almost 13,000t of cheese to Algeria and just over 8,000t of cheddar to the US market in 2019.